Mate Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #3)(8)

“Tobias?” She should really warn him.

“I see them.”

“No, you don’t underst—”

Her throat closed up as Harlan gripped her neck from behind, strangling her. Tobias turned at her choked noise, and his face went feral, eyes darkening to the color of tar. Fear dumped into her system as she fought for breath, sandwiched between two terrifying brawlers.

He can shift! She just needed to tell him that and warn him about Harlan’s animal because Tobias was going to feel some serious pain if he engaged. And for some reason, she really, really didn’t want this almost stranger to get hurt on her account. She already felt protective of him. Can’t breathe!

Tobias dropped her bags in the dirt by the porch. “Let her go.”

“I can do whatever I want with my witch.”

“She isn’t yours, Harlan. She’s mine. My mate. If you don’t let her go, I’m going to rip you limb from limb.”

She didn’t doubt it from the savage look in his face, but the corners of her vision were starting to spark, and Harlan was lifting her off the ground now. “Tobias,” she choked out.

Harlan yanked the neck of her shirt to the side. “She don’t have your bite mark, so she don’t look like your mate to me.”

“Don’t!” Tobias roared.

Fuck, Harlan was going to mark her. Desperately, she flailed and caught him in the shins with the heels of her thick-soled hiking boots. Harlan grunted in pain and eased his grip on her throat, and as soon as she connected with the porch floorboards, she pushed forward, yanking them both off balance. She fell down the stairs, gasping for that beautiful oxygen in the absence of Harlan’s strong grip. Holding her throat and sucking at the air like a landed fish, Vera lifted her gaze to Tobias who didn’t look like Tobias at all anymore. Standing a few feet away from her was a form she couldn’t understand. Twelve feet tall with dark brown fur sprouting from his massive body, Tobias was in the final moments of his Change.

“Holy shit,” she choked out, arching back to look at his terrifying face. Big block head, lips curled back over long canines and death in his eyes, Tobias was a much bigger monster than Harlan was.

Behind her, she could hear rustling and then the sound of Harlan’s animal chirping. Harlan’s non-terrifying battle cry would be comical if she wasn’t lying frozen right beneath a freaking enraged grizzly bear right now. Tobias roared a deafening sound that shook the earth under her, and in a flash of self-preservation, she made like a log and rolled away, sure at any moment either Tobias or Harlan would attack her.

She sat up, windpipe feeling like it had been crushed, and fumbled for her little weapon in her pocket. The medicine that suppressed her animal was still lingering in her system, and she wouldn’t be able to help Tobias that way, but she was about to pepper spray the shit out of Harlan the giant porcupine.

Stupid Harlan wasn’t like wild porcupines that turned their back on their attackers and tried to survive. He was six times the size of a wild one, and on the attack, charging Tobias. The dumb f*ck was going to die, but his quills hurt like a mother trucker. She knew. She’d been at the wrong end of Harlan’s anger before.

She popped the cap of the pepper spray and aimed, but someone yanked her arm and spun her.

“I don’t think so, witch,” Grady growled out, his eyes blazing bright blue. Grady was cougar shifter and apparently his meds were wearing off, too. With a squeak, she lifted the mace and sprayed. He howled in pain and fell backward, just as she inhaled the cloud.

“Ow,” she moaned, rubbing her eyes. They watered so badly she could barely see, but she could make out the blurry forms of Tobias and Harlan locked up. And if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a wolf headed into the fight. “Dammit, Ewen, you country-ass son of a cockchafer!” she screamed. “Mind your own business!” She bolted for the snarling battle and aimed the pepper spray, but everyone was fighting now, and she didn’t know where to shoot that wouldn’t get Tobias. Just as she was about to push the little button on Harlan’s face, Tobias turned on her with murder in his gaze. There was a moment between them when they both locked eyes, and she could see it. She could see his plan and oh, it was an awful one. “No!” she screamed at him, only able to stumble back a step before he opened those massive jaws and came for her.

Tobias’s teeth sank into her, two on her front and two on her back shoulder. She screamed a bloodcurdling sound of pain as his teeth clamped deeply into her flesh. The bite lasted a moment, and the second he released her, she fell backward.

As she looked down at the two puncture wounds on her front in horror, the woods grew eerily quiet. Even Harlan had stopped his attack and was staring at her with those wide, stupid porcupine eyes of his. And out of sheer madness, she pulled the trigger of the pepper spray on him until he ran away and hid under the porch. This was all his fault.

“I thought you would be romantic when you claimed me!” she screamed, worked into a proper fury now. She stood and wished her animal would come out now so she could bite the shit out of Tobias’s eyeball or his bear dick or somewhere else super sensitive because, “You bit me in the tit!”

Tobias stood frozen on all fours in front of her, and now her anger was so great she rushed him and bit his neck. She couldn’t pierce his tough hide, and now her mouth was full of fur. Tobias didn’t act like he was affected it all, which pissed her off more, so she clamped down harder until her teeth felt like they were coming loose from her head. Releasing him, she shoved him instead. There. “You deserved that, mate.” Stifling a sob, she stooped and picked up the package, then lifted her chin primly and addressed the misfits. “I will not miss any of you asshats.” Then she marched off into the woods toward the runway she’d been manicuring for her knight in shining bear-fur to come rescue her.